Open Letter To The
American Public
Don’t Tolerate Media Disinformation About the Massive and Rapidly Growing
Anti-War Movement

by Paul Dean

Dissident Voice
January 20, 2003

Dear Friends, Family, and concerned
citizens,

I am writing
this in an attempt to provide an accurate (albeit admittedly emotional)
firsthand account of the Jan. 18th peace rally in San Francisco.After reading national news accounts of the
event, (CNN,NBC ABC, CBS etc.) I have
come to the not-so-surprising conclusion that our corporate media is reaching
new lows in an attempt to delude citizens about the size, scope and commitment
of the opposition to the Bush war agenda.

The event in San
Francisco was, by any measure, huge with a capital HUGE. There was no vantage
point on the ground from which any observer could hope to survey the extent of
the crowd. CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS all described the crowd size as “tens of
thousands of people.” None of them carried a single photo on their web sites
from the San Francisco march, to accompany their (completely inadequate)
descriptions of the event. The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle did, however,
print several photos which give the viewer some sense of the enormity of the
event. These can be viewed on www.commondreams.org.
One of them, either an aerial photo, or taken from a very tall building, shows
an enormous, densely packed crowd that obviously expands well beyond what could
be captured by the camera’s viewpoint. The other, taken near the right side of
the stage, shows the view from the Civic Center. That perspective also shows a
massive crowd. We were, for most of the event, several hundred yards to the
right of the point at which that photo was taken, far outside the frame, and
there were tens of thousands of people in that area alone. In addition, no one
anywhere near the front could tell where the back of the crowd ended. I spoke
to people who claimed that marchers were still crowding into the square more
than two hours after the event officially began.

Photo:
January 18 anti-war protest, City Hall San Francisco. Note that this is only
the front of the march, with far more people spilling in from the street to the
rear. The photos below show the rest of the march route.

The SF Chronicle
reported that organizers estimated the crowd to be about 200,000, but that San
Francisco Police claimed there were 55,000. I have been to huge, sold out
concerts at the Oakland Coliseum, and was once at a football game in Miami that
was reported to have between 70 and 80,000 people in attendance. My subjective
judgment is that these events were tiny by comparison. I don’t want to belabor
the point……okay, I DO want to belabor the point……This event was gigantic,
inspiring, mammoth, gargantuan, and deserves to reported for what it was and
for what it represents. I think it demonstrates that we the people really do
have the power. We have the power to stop this war and we have the power to
take back the power from these war mongering, greedy bastards that think they
can literally get away with murder. As Rep. Barbara Lee said in her speech, and
our experience has confirmed, Bush has awakened a sleeping giant.

The corporate
media will continue to lie and distort in a futile attempt to make us believe
that our numbers are still small and that Bush’s war is inevitable. But now
there are hundreds of thousands (not tens of thousands) of eyewitnesses to
their manipulative and deceitful tactics. We have seen firsthand the
discrepancy between reality directly observed and the pathetic corporate media
misrepresentation of that reality.

Those of us who
were at the rallies in Washington and San Francisco represent millions more who
could not attend, and our numbers are growing daily. Now is not the time for
resignation and acceptance of the will of the Corporate Axis of Evildoers. They
cannot be allowed to start wars without our consent merely because it serves
their political and financial aims. Now is the time to write letters, march,
and make your voices be heard.

The march on
Washington almost certainly was attended by hundreds of thousands of
demonstrators. And yet the only graphic image on the ABC news web site was of a
single activist, the day after the main rally, being arrested on the White
House lawn, surrounded by three or four policemen. As with the San Francisco
march, not a single photo showing any vantage point from which one could get a
sense of the size of the Washington crowd, appeared on the web sites of CNN,
NBC, ABC, or CBS.

Early Sunday,
stories appeared in which an underhanded attempt was made to create the impression
that only 30,000 demonstrators had attended the DC rally. Here I directly quote
the verbiage from the CNN story from their web site: “In Washington, police
said 30,000 marched through the streets, part of a much larger crowd, that
packed the east end of the National Mall and spilled onto the Capitol grounds.”
Later in the same story: “Terrence Gainer, chief of the US Capitol Police said
“about 30,000 people moved out on the march route,” a two mile trek from the
huge rally.”

These people need
to know that we are not stupid sheep. They need to know we will NOT tolerate
this type of deliberate misinformation sold to us as “news.” I urge all of you
to send letters to corporate “news” outlets, and let them know that you are
aware of their distortions and do not approve. Do not be afraid to speak out.
In fact, I believe our safety, and our children’s future depends on our doing
so.

If we stand
together, as we did in San Francisco and Washington, the Bush regime will not
have any hope of silencing us, even with media complicity. We are millions,
even tens of millions, and they are few. Let’s not allow Bush, or the corporate
media to ‘misunderestimate’ us. Let’s continue this process of waking up, and
intensify our activism, not only to prevent this war, but to restore
constitutional rights, convert to renewable clean energy, reform our electoral
system, prevent corporations from controlling public policy, provide our
citizens with health care, jobs, decent housing, etc. These actions will provide
us all with far more security than engaging in silent complicity while our
corrupt “President” lets our economy go to hell, coddles corporate criminals,
increases our dependency on oil, and starts wars that neither he, nor any of
his friends or family will fight.